


I Wish I Was A Girl

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-09
Updated: 2010-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:36:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The swimming pool incident. Written in July 2004.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Wish I Was A Girl

"Trust me."

"Never trust a boy."

James´ hand stretched to reach her in the same way the lines of her mouth stretched to form a fleeting, subtle smile.

But still Lily didn´t take his hand.

James never knew how to speak to her, his breathing heavy by her mere presence. So he standed there while she went down the trembling steel stairs, James looking down to the endless, bright-blue pool wondering why girls always were scared to jump.

He waited until she was on the ground again, of course he couldn´t risk her _not_ seeing him jump.

There was something endearing about his unjustified confidence, and that made up for any imperfection in the act, for the actual lack of skills. James jumped like a boy, as it was meant to be, not like some bronzed-skin unfallible God.

Not like Sirius.

His back didn´t curve in the graceful way Sirius´ did and the fall hurted a bit but that was okay, because though she was pretending to be chattering with her Muggle friends James had caught Evans looking at him as he surfaced.

Sirius crashed next to Remus, water splashing everywhere (the girls behind yelled), his long body wet and tanned in a too desirable way, a tempting delicious piece of fruit within Remus´ reach.

He tried to cover Sirius with the towel but he refused, arguing that the water relieved him of the cruel July sun. Still Remus was drying him (not his hair, _never_ his hair, black and pouring, sticking to the skin of his shoulders, reflecting everything around them, like an unknown gem yet to be discovered by the geologists), attacking him with the damp curiosity of the towel.

Remus bent to smell Sirius, to press a ghost kiss against his neck. He smelled clean, like swimming, pure and untraceable.

You smell like freedom.

"Why don´t you take off your shirt?"

"I´m not wearing any sunblock."

Sirius raised his eyebrows a little more severly than he intended.

"Yeah, that´s it."

Remus looked away. Behind the fence a group of kids were harassing the ice cream man, towels over their shoulders, hair darkened with water, so perfect, so uncomplicated. Remus always wanted to be somebody else.

"Can you believe those two?"

Sirius was gesturing toward James and Lily, engaged once more in a conversation-argument-tennis match-whatever.

"I tell you, Remus, Potter owes us big time for dragging us to this Muggle childish playground. I hope he gets the bird, I don´t like wasting so much energy."

Caressing inadvertedly Sirius´ forearm Remus smiled, he knew that, contrary to all his loud (everything about Sirius was loud) objections he was having a great time in the swimming pool.

Sirius was an animal of fresh air, of games and showing off, and he belonged here, he was an animal of happiness.

Some metres away James confirmed that he, too, was of that species, although he was not so alike Sirius as rumor might imply, and always around him (or him around her) like a beautiful satellite to his clueless planet, orbitated Lily Evans, whose little triumphs and unimportant flaws came to point everything that was wrong with Remus.

When Remus looked a Lily he saw a kind of possibility, of what Remus could have been. _Should_ have been.

He would have been a perfect girl, much like Lily (the eyes less green, but the lips thinner and the lack of red, intoxicating thick hair compensated by Remus´ taller body), smart and cute, able to tease the boys and be teased back, and blush at those boys´ stolen kisses.

Life would be easier, the path clearer, Remus saw as he held in front of him the lighter mirror that was Lily Evans.

In the nearest part of the pool Sirius was diving in and emerging out again, coming up for air and smiling, smiling at him, with the innocence and deathly brilliance of any of Sirius´ smiles.

"Let go off me!" somebody was shouting.

James was trying to drown Evans playfully and she complained and frighted, and kicked James but each _Let go off me, Potter_ became less of a warning and more like laughter.

Remus and Sirius noticed this changing in Evans´ behaviour and exchanged a fleeting but meaningful glance. Sirius was grinning even more broadly than James, eyes reds because of the chlorine and water pouring down his face, brighting it, lapping and cleaning the skin.

When Sirius finally jumped out, with the impulse of his hands against the border of the pool, Remus took a long look at him, the kind of devotion often applied to a statue, and Sirius might have been just that, something Michaelangelo could never project, perfect proportions, the hair wild the same colour as his wild eyes. And at the same time it was stupid, Remus conceded, a trick of one´s affection. For Sirius wasn´t the most handsome boy Remus had ever meet, he was not a god, he was not a model or a cinema star and it wasn´t just healthy to fix so much attention into another human being.

Still it was Sirius.

Sirius had classified thirty-two different ways that Remus had of looking at him, and this was new.

"What are you thinking?"

"You are perfect."

"And that bothers you..."

"Yes." Sirius lied down on the towel next to Remus, scrutinizing his face, trying to understand. Remus swallowed. "It bothers me because I don´t understand. What am I suppossed to do? What is my place? How could anyone like you...?"

Sirius propped himself on one elbow and never let Remus finish the sentence.

"Sirius! There is people looking."

The mischiveous marauder smile appeared on his lips.

"That´s the idea."

And people looked, because this was, after all 1975, and it was not often that you found two beautiful boys kissing passionately in a public swimming pool.

Lily´s friends giggled at the audacity and Lily´s sister Petunia, who had arrived that very moment to collect Lily, gasped and begun dragging her little innocent sister away from such dangerous view.

Like somebody who has been robbed of one of his vital organs James Potter run up to the sisters, panting heavily and taking a couple of seconds to catch up with his breath.

"You coming tomorrow?"

There was no point in coming back to this place full of Muggles if Evans wasn´t there. The thought of not seeing Lily Evans in a swimsuit again was unbearable.

Lily looked at her sister and then back at Potter´s gentle and anxious eyes.

"I don´t know. Maybe."

"Please?"

"Potter, I had no idea you knew that word."

He chuckled, his cocksure smile returned after the panic of losing Lily for the rest of the summer.

"Someday you are going to trust me, Evans. Just wait and see."

Finally he let go off Lily´s hand and she run towards her sister, but in the very last second she glanced back and waved James _goodbye_.


End file.
